Surgeries netting almost £1bn for non-existent ‘ghost patients’

DOCTORS could be earning almost £1billion from “ghost patients” according to figures uncovered by a fraud investigation that had to be halted during the Covid pandemic.

GP practices are paid for each patient they care for and received £164.64 per registered person in 2022-23.

However, there were almost six million more patients registered to a GP in England last year than the total population of the country.

That would indicate that surgeries earned around £955 million for non-existent patients according to the NHS figures, analysed by the PA news agency.

They show 62.9 million patients registered to GPS in November 2023 – despite the population of England being just 57.1 million in the latest Office for National Statistics estimate in 2022.

The 5.8 million non-existent patients registered to GPS last year is 61 per cent higher than pre-pandemic, when the NHS Counter Fraud Authority started an investigation that was halted due to the Covid crisis.

There were 3.6 million ghost patients in 2018, the data suggests.

The NHS fraud regulator opened a formal investigation into whether GPS were claiming taxpayers’ money for non-existent patients in 2019.

However, it said its “priorities shifted” due to Covid and it has not returned to it since. The Taxpayers’ Alliance said the public were “subsidising” these errors.

Tom Ryan, researcher at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “When it comes to GP patients, the numbers simply don’t add up. Taxpayers are subsiding service users who may not even exist.

“Unless these missing patients can be found, funding for GP practices should be amended accordingly.”

The Royal College of GPS (RCGP) said surgeries “try hard to keep their patient lists up to date” and that it was an issue of record-keeping rather than a deliberate attempt to profit.

Dr Victoria Tzortziou-brown, vice-chairman of the RCGP, said the discrepancies occurred for a number of reasons.

“People’s circumstances, and therefore our records, change all the time.

Some practices, particularly in innercity areas, have quite a high turnover [of patients].

“Our administrative staff spend a lot of time processing patients’ notes when we are informed they have died, left the surgery or moved elsewhere,” she said. “Recent developments enabling timely electronic transfer of patient records between practices when a patient moves can assist towards better accuracy of GP records in the future.”

An NHS spokesman said: “NHS England works with GP surgeries to review and update patient lists, and it is vital that practices do this on a regular basis, so they are as accurate as possible.”

A spokesman for the NHS Counter Fraud Authority said: “The NHSCFA had planned to undertake an intelligence assessment on the nature and scale of GP capitation fraud in 2019.

“This was to improve our understanding of the risk posed to the NHS by fraud and error in general practice, primarily as regards GP capitation [patient numbers].

“It was effectively halted by difficulties in obtaining core data and our priorities shifted from this position with the NHS response to Covid 19.

“We have not yet revisited the issue as we direct our resources to where the intelligence indicates the most appropriate priorities sit.”

‘The numbers simply don’t add up ... the taxpayer is funding service users who may not even exist’